• Question: Do you prefer electron microscopes or light microscopes?

    Asked by cocoonut to Rachael on 13 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Rachael Ward

      Rachael Ward answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Hi cocoonut,

      Wow – a really hard question.

      It kind of depends what you want to look at or what questions you are asking. Light microscopes are much much easier to use – you can just switch them on and look at your sample. However, you can normally only magnify something by x10 to about x100. This is okay if you want to look at a neuron in a worm for example but not if you want to see what is INSIDE that neuron. Thats when I use an electron microscope.

      Electron microscopes cost a LOT more than light microscopes so you normally share them with a lot of other scientists. It also takes a lot longer to prepare the sample to look at as you need to “fix” it – you might have seen samples in jars fixed in aldyhyde, its a bit like this. Then we often slice them very very thinly which is really hard and takes ages to learn. Because of the extra effort involved in preparing your sample for electron microscopy, I find using the electron microscope more exciting so I think its my favourite – just!

      I’ll put some of my electron microscope images on my profile page for you to see if youre interested.

Comments